


Lost Wings

by Commander53572



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Muteness, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24615211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commander53572/pseuds/Commander53572
Summary: Maleficent cut off Mal’s wings so that no one knew she had a daughter. Separate snippets of Mal dealing with her loss.
Kudos: 20





	1. Fairy Godmother

Mal lay staring at the ceiling of the hospital room, not knowing what she was supposed to do now that the doctors were finally finished examining her. Her whole body itched, on the Isle no one was allowed to get that close, to be that close would get you killed. But this wasn’t the Isle, was it.

Outside the Fairy Godmother had finally arrived and was speaking to the doctor.

“There seems to be no life threatening damage however there is bruising indicating... Abuse.” The Doctor coughed awkwardly he had never seen this level damage ever in Auradon. But he swallowed and continued. “She’s a little malnourished but nothing to be overly concerned with. But she still has yet to respond to any of the staff here and the other 3 have said that they have never heard her speak, it’s unclear whether this is for physical or psychological reasons as of yet.”

He paused again, clearly trying to find a way to word what came next. The Fairy Godmother just raised her eyebrow willing him to continue.

“But there’s something else, which is why I called you down here...”

Instead of vocalise what it was he showed her a picture taken of the girls back where there were thick ridged scars stretching down her back. And across her entire back was a tattoo of beautiful wings all in black.

The Fairy Godmother just stood there for a second too taken aback to reply.

“Her wings...” It was something so heinous to take a Fae’s wings and the Fairy Godmother’s own emotions screamed in pain at the sight. How could someone do this?

The Fairy Godmother quickly tried to compose herself and continued “This could be why she doesn’t speak, taking a Fae’s wings takes something from them you can never put back and this comes in different forms for every person. For Maleficent it was always her innocence and compassion, that she could never get back.”

The Doctor just looked at her in pity knowing she needed some time to process this, as he did.

“We were hoping you would speak to her, hoping you might understand.”

The Fairy Godmother just nodded.

As the Fairy Godmother entered Mal’s head shot towards her, her eyes filled with fear before a smirk crossed her features. And her eyebrow raised as if to question what she was doing there. But the whole thing felt just for show to the Fairy Godmother.

She gulped, “Mal... Your Wings?” And truly she didn’t know what else to say.

Mal looked shocked for a moment then sad. And just like that her defences were down in the presence of the understanding look from the fellow Fae.

“What happened?” She needed to know.

Mal just sighed, inaudibly, and mimed for a pen a paper. Which the Fairy Godmother found on the other side of the room, she supposed placed there in hope for Mal to communicate.

Mal took a minute but then she scrawled a short message which she turned for the Fairy Godmother to read, and she could swear her heart broke just a little bit more for this girl.

‘My Mother took them so I couldn’t be recognised as her own.‘

The Fairy Godmother took a deep breath to try and hold back tears. But Mal turned the paper back around again.

‘I haven’t been able to speak since. I read that it was because there was a price for a loss of wings.‘

But Mal accompanied it with a shrug, pretending she didn’t care but instead it was full of loss and longing. The Fairy Godmother had never lost her wings but she knew the cost it had but she couldn’t imagine the pain this had caused Mal.

She tried to speak but she couldn’t force any words pass her lips. Instead her eyes landed on Mal’s neck where her tattoo’s wing tips were visible, the wings she remembered were beautiful but crooked and snapped in some places. Normally she hated tattoos but this one she understood.

Mal noticed her gaze and started to write again.

‘I got them to remember.

But it never worked.‘

That’s what broke the dam in The Fairy Godmother and she cried. She cried because Maleficent had caused irreversible damage, she couldn’t fix Mal’s problems no matter how hard she wanted to. Mal cried too because she knew, and this pain she’d been holding in had suddenly burst free.

Wings could never be reattached.

And there would always be a gap in Mal’s very being where her wings used to be.

It might get better. But it would always be there.


	2. Ben

She touched his head with her two fingers, head tipped and her forehead rested against his. He didn’t know what to think until he could feel it... Her memories shared with her magic accessed years too late:

He saw times she was beaten as punishment because Maleficent thought people were too close to finding out who Mal really was.

He felt when her wings were cut off from her back and the unbearable pain it caused.

He experienced the horror of realising she couldn’t speak and the raw pain of knowing it’s the price the wings took with them.

He was her when she wasn’t tough enough out on the streets of the Isle, having to be even tougher than everybody else, having to figure out how to strike fear when she couldn’t force threats past her lips.

When she let her hand finally drop tears graced his cheeks too, and just for a second her head stayed right there and he heard her ragged breathing and he felt that pain again.

He knew her mother was the worst villain anyone had ever seen but nothing could have ever prepared him for what Mal showed him.

He finally swallowed the tears and pulled away, her own tear-streaked face now in his view. Her eyes were filled with so much pain as they bore into his own.

“Mal...” What could Ben possibly say, after what he just saw. “Thank you.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say but he knew there was nothing he could say that would possibly cover the horror he felt, so he just took what it was as a gift because Mal finally trusted him and was finally letting him in to her past.

Mal nodded, like she knew what he truly wanted to say.

The fact that he knew that the pain Mal felt may get better but it would never fully go away, she would carry the weight of her loss for the rest of her life. He felt her resignation to the truth they both knew.

He always always knew the Isle kids had it hard but really he had no idea how hard.

Not until Mal let him in, the best way she knew how.

He felt the new understanding between them settle as he took another deep breath. He had never felt closer to wanting to kill someone as badly as he did now.

But then he looked at Mal and he saw a look of understanding cross her features, she smiled and shrugged trying to brush of the whole thing but he knew the pain now behind her eyes, he could still feel it like the feelings were his own.

‘I want to kill her.’

She finger-spelled slowly as Ben was still learning Mal’s language that the Isle Kids created.

‘But she’s not worth it.’

Ben knew that but that didn’t erase the urge.

‘It won’t make this better.’

Ben knew that too. He hated it. But he knew it was true.

He felt the ‘Nothing will’ that was unspoken between them as Mal turned her back and walked away like she hadn’t just turned Ben’s perfect Auradonian world upside down.


	3. Jay

No one in Auradon Prep dared comment when Mal was having a bad day. When there were vicious dark circles under her eyes and her glare pierced anyone that soo much as glanced her way. The days when people found her staring into space in random places of the school with no memory of how she got there.

Because news travelled fast and despite all their faults in empathy everybody knew that wings were sacred. That’s when everybody finally realised that the VKs weren’t carbon-copys of their parents they were more victims of their cruelty.

Mal was having a bad day.

She was leant up against the library building when she should’ve been in her art class, which is saying it was really bad because she actually liked her art classes. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t force her limbs to move.

Then she heard the thud of footsteps to her left, alarmingly close in her distracted state. She whipped to her feet and threw a punch with all her strength at her attackers jaw, incentivised further when she hard the alarming crack of her fist connecting. She tackled him with all her weight unseeing as they both toppled to the ground.

That’s when she heard a voice reach her in her stupor.

“Mal, Mal. Stop!”

She finally paused and looked at the boy’s face and saw Jay’s eyes boring back into hers.

Realisation crawled up her skin.

She attacked her friend. She wasn’t on The Isle.

Ragged breaths passed her lips as she pulled herself off of Jay and lent herself against the building again.

Jay slowly raised up to a sitting position and joined her with his back to the building eyes studying the Forrest edge in front of them.

The silence encompassed the pair for a few moments until Mal turned with a guilty expression marring her features.

Her fingers moved rapidly as she signed to Jay her apologies. ‘Jay I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognise you, I swear. Please, please believe me...‘

But Jay slowly put his hand over hers to stop her rambling and flashed her his endlessly understanding smile. Because he did know, he was there. and if she had paused on The Isle to check who her attacker was she would’ve been killed.

She took a deep breathe and shot a weak smile back.

‘So are you going to tell me what’s wrong. Please Mal, talking about it will help.’ This softness would have been so alien on him just a few months ago but as she was learning Auradon was different.

Her eyes flicked away and if it was possible slouched further into the brick behind her.

She slowly wrung her hands, gathering her thoughts. She wasn’t used to sharing her feelings especially after most of her life being lived in silence before they created this language.

She sighed. Sounding far too weary for her small frame and young age.

‘I can feel them Jay’

Then she paused and looked towards jay as if to check that he knew what she was talking about but of course he did because the sorrow for her wings was practically tangible on days like these.

‘But I can’t... Because they’re gone.’

She swallowed down her tears and continued...

‘I feel like if I close my eyes I can feel them flapping and the power they possessed, feel the feathers against my skin, feel the weight on my back.’ 

She hated remembering because then she had to come back to reality again. Missing even more what she had lost.

‘But then I can feel the burning as she took them. The smell as she singed the most important thing I had with a smile on her face’

Her hands fell back into her lap, speech finished.

She looked towards Jay to see the sadness in his eyes surely reflected from hers. He couldn’t her any words of comfort as neither were very fluent in emotions.

But he took her hand in his and squeezed and that’s all that she really needed, for him to be there.

Her head rested on his shoulder as tears were finally left to roll down her cheeks.

They sat like that for what felt like hours.

By the time the sun was setting Mal finally found the strength to move and the pair slowly made their way back to the dorms.

She didn’t feel better but she went to sleep with the hope that tomorrow would be better than today which is much more than she had on The Isle.


End file.
